


home (kabby)

by subparauthorings



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, post-s4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 14:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13168536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subparauthorings/pseuds/subparauthorings
Summary: "And so much had passed between Marcus Kane and Abby Griffin at that point that there was only one thing either and both of them needed to know... They had a home."(for the slackru fluff meme ages ago sorry i realise i suck)





	home (kabby)

Home.

It was a word, one of many, that had lost its Old Earth meaning over time. ‘Home’, on the Ark, was synonymous with ‘living place’, and, occasionally, with Earth. ‘Earth’ was the most abstract concept the word ‘home’ applied to. Linguistic evolution was an odd concept, rarely thought of, and with so few people on the Ark, no one really had the time or energy to investigate the usage of the word ‘home’ as something regarded with emotion, something you felt with a weight laden on your chest, something with memories and thoughts and images tied so closely to it that you couldn’t deny the disconnect between your house and your home.

Some people said Earth was home. Earth was the only thing they called home. The metal boxes where their beds weren’t their home. That was fair. That was justified. When these people thought of home, they thought of paradise, of a promised land waiting for their children. Something the blood in their bones longed for.

No one ever spoke of home as a person on the Ark. Maybe it was because there wasn’t the kind of love stories you could set to a background of sunsets and flowers on a metal ship orbiting above a burned planet. Maybe it was because everything seemed duller, greyer, as if the sun couldn’t quite touch the lovers. Or maybe, simply, it was because after nearly a hundred years without a home, people simply forgot what the word meant.

But then, of course, humanity went home. And the word found its way back into the common vernacular of the people from the sky.

+   +   +

It was night, but of course, Abby only knew that in the hypothetical. The Bunker had a day/night simulator, but once you tasted a real sunset, a real day and a real night, it awoke something inside you, Abby thought, that couldn’t really be simulated. The lights in the Bunker could tell her when to sleep, but it wasn’t really the same.

She sat at the desk in what would have been Cadogan’s office, a pen in her hand. Something that Abby had only discovered in the past few years was that she loved the way pens felt in her hand - she loved watching the ink flow from the little thing onto a page below, loved knowing how she could etch the words in her mind into a form that had semi-permanence.

On the Ark, people were literate, but they never really learned to  _write._ They never learned how to use their handwriting as an extension of their thought processes, and now Abby realised what a shame that was, that paper was so scarce in her upbringing and that none of her people had ever felt this  _catharses,_ the release that came from watching her stresses and worries and dreams and ideas leave her mind, but remain preserved in navy ink, pressed in the pages of the moleskin journal she had found in her first weeks in the Bunker.

Abby treasured that journal. It was somewhat of an extension of her mind - a collection of the logical, creative, idealist, longing thoughts she had, collected and etched in words and letters and little sketches of things - very simple things, Clarke had inherited her artistic talent from her father - that her mind couldn’t bear to contain any more. Things she needed gone but that she needed to remember. Painful things. Bittersweet things.

But that wasn’t why she was here now.

That wasn’t why she had crept from her bed in the early hours of the ‘morning’, the dimmed Bunker lights dictating to her that she should return to sleep. That wasn’t why she had pulled on one of Marcus’ sweaters and paused for a moment to inhale the smell of him and to revel in the warmth the sweater brought her, not only against the concrete chill of the bunker, but in the very depths of her, before padding softly down to the office where she kept her precious pen and journal. Abby Griffin didn’t wake in the middle of the night, the last night, to mourn losses she had already felt so acutely. No.

No, Abby Griffin had awoken in the early hours of the Last Day, to write about hope.

She smiled, and placed the nib of the pen to her journal, and began to write.

_My dearest Marcus,_

_There is a story in our lives somewhere, I am sure. A story, perhaps, of politics, and loss, and new beginnings. A bittersweet story. A story of unlikely lovers. A story of dark times and leaders and wars and battles. But that’s not the story I’m writing to you to tell. If we survive this, there will be enough people telling that story. I want to tell a different one. I want to tell the story of Marcus Kane, not as a leader, but as a man. As a man I love._

_When you were a child, there weren’t enough like you. You were optimistic and quiet and you loved your mother, more than anything. There were only ever few children on the Ark, especially for Third-Generation children like us, so of course, I knew you. But everyone knew you, you were Vera Kane’s son. Even if you didn’t know it, you were a beacon of hope, I think, to our parents’ generation. Knowing their future was in the hands of children like you - humble, intelligent, kind children like you - set them at ease a little, I think. But then, I wouldn’t know. I knew you, but I didn’t really know you. We were always in each others’ orbit, but we never really knew each other._

_You knew Jake, though. He loved you - he really, truly loved you, Marcus. Like a brother. Maybe that’s why I felt so betrayed after he died - but I’m not here to talk (or more accurately, write) about that. But you knew Jake, and you and Jake saw an injustice in our world, an injustice you so wanted to fix. So you looked for the best way you could give yourself a legitimate voice - and coming from what could be coined as a ‘working-class’ family, you rose through the ranks of the Ark’s military, having to make the kind of horrific decisions I would never wish on you, my love, in a million years. But again, pain is not what I’m here to discuss. It simply comes up in your story so often, my darling, that I wish I could erase the horrors of your past - of our past. But I can’t, really, can I?_

_It’s the Last Day, officially. If we were above the ground, it would be dark outside, because it would be 2:14 in the morning, according to the clock. Tomorrow, our waiting ends. We all step out into what we can only hope to be a brave new world._

_We suffered so much in our past. Sometimes, after all the choices I was forced to make, I doubted whether I deserved to survive. I once questioned, after all I’d lost, whether I wanted to. But for a long time, I’ve been resigned to the fact that you deserve survival. You are a good man, Marcus, and your intentions, since childhood, have been to bridge us to a society without injustice, and a society bathed in peace._

_Your mother would be so proud of you._

_So, Marcus, that all begins tomorrow. You are our future. You are what the people in this bunker need to lead us into the sun. But it’s still today. The Last Day. The Last Day of our pilgrimage to peace. So I have something to ask of you._

Abby paused, lifting her pen from the page. Her sloping cursive paragraphs blinked back up at her, swirling and mixing in her mind with memories of nights tangled in sheets and herself wrapped in a man who she loved, whom she had loved when she couldn’t bring herself to love anything else. A man who believed that she was deserving of everything her traitorous mind tried to tell her she wasn’t. Her hope. Her light. Her landing place.

_Marry me?_

She penned the words delicately, almost nervously, as if she were saying them aloud. As if she was afraid of the tangible rejection of someone standing in front of her. But she couldn’t be rejected by paper, could she? After all, the whole point of Abby trying to pen her feelings was catharsis, but honestly, did she really want to exorcise the warmth that pooled in her belly whenever Marcus entered a room?

Abby sighed. She had it bad.

Setting her beloved pen down on the desk, she placed a palm firmly on the journal and gently tore her letter to Marcus free of the binding. She folded it in three, and scratched the word ‘Marcus’ onto the top of the letter. Standing, she looked around for a hiding place for it. She couldn’t keep it with her journal - the letter felt different, somehow, like it wasn’t supposed to live within the same bindings of the suffering she had depicted in her journal. Finally, her eyes came to rest atop a dresser by the side door of the office - a small, wooden thing, that she was willing to bet Marcus hadn’t touched, because it looked like such a  _personal_ object, and during his tenure in this office he had constrained himself to the cool, metal, utilitarian desk in the centre of the room, where he kept things like medical records and ration lists.

Abby padded over toward it, pausing a moment to run her fingers over the wood. It was a beautiful dresser, like something she would read about in an Old Earth novel. It was a shame, she thought, that no one would likely open it and find her letter for a very long time.

Her hand clasped around the cool metal of the drawer’s handle, and she pulled it open, ready to set her letter down inside it and return to bed. She was, however, surprised to be met with an ever-so-slightly yellowing page in the farthest corner of the drawer, labeled only  _V._

Abby wasn’t one to pry. She really wasn’t. But the thought that this letter had remained untouched for so long - perhaps over a hundred years, she thought, despite the seemingly good condition of the paper - piqued her interest to highly for her to ignore. Placing her own letter carefully in the drawer, she delicately lifted the yellowing page and began to read.

_My dearest Abby -_

_I  vow to always love you - I will always love you._   _You are my heart. I promise to support you, through thick and thin. I vow to love you as you are, and to grow old by your side. My body, my mind, my soul and my heart. They’re all yours. Everything that I have and everything that I am, belonged to you long before today. And I promise that it shall all be be yours forever. I will be yours forever. I will follow you anywhere you go and anywhere you may lead me to._

_I want to be your lover, your companion and your best friend for the rest of my life. I vow to love and cherish you, to keep you close and, with faithfulness, to be your support and help in times of need, to make you laugh and to hold you when you cry and to always show you the respect and honour you so deserve until I close my eyes on this Earth for the very last time._

_What can I say that I haven’t already said?_   _From this day on, I choose you, my beloved Abby. I want nothing more than to stand by your side, and sleep in your arms; to be joy to your heart, and food for your soul; to bring out the best in you, always, and, for you, to be the most that I can. I promise to laugh with you in the good times, to struggle and support you in the bad; to offer you solace you when you are downhearted; to wipe away your tears with my hands and my love; to share with you all my riches and honours; to play with you as much as I can until we grow old; and, still loving each other sweetly and gladly, until our lives shall come to an end._

_I love you, Abby. I always will. I will never stop. So most importantly - I vow to love and cherish you, always, as my most beloved person. I want nothing more than to take you as my wife, and for you to wish to take me as your husband, to love and to hold, for as long as we both may live._

_You are my home._

Abby hadn’t realised she was crying, until she tore her eyes away from the very familiar handwriting (in her precious pen, a very small indignant voice in the back of her head piped up, but the rest of her consciousness shushed it effortlessly) at the sound of a voice in the door she had her back to.

“You weren’t supposed to find that.”

Abby turned around. Marcus was standing in the doorway, cheeks flushed pink and adorably clad in the white thermal shirt that was the closest thing to pyjamas he owned. Abby wondered for a moment why he hadn’t donned his sweater, before remembering that she had stolen it for her late-night writing trip.

“I figured.”

“Are you mad?” Marcus scratched his neck. Abby noted absently - her mind was still mostly occupied processing the piece of beautiful writing she had just absorbed - that this was the most nervous she had ever seen him.

“Mad?” Abby said wondrously. “Marcus, I… this is  _beautiful._ I can’t imagine, I could never imagine… You want to marry me?” She asked softly.

Marcus padded softly toward her, meeting her in his arms and wiping a tear from her face.

“Abby,” He whispered. “I’ve wanted to marry you for longer than you could imagine.”

“When did you write this?” Abby whispered into his chest. He hesitated, before answering.

“While you were unconscious. After the gas. I… I couldn’t imagine losing you. But I never imagined you would forgive me for what I did. But I… I wanted to imagine that one day, maybe, I could say these things to you.” He paused, and Abby felt his chin come to rest on her head. “I meant them. Every word. I still do.”

Abby had to clench her eyes shut to stop a tear from falling.

“Marcus, I…”

“You don’t have to say any of it back, Abby, if you don’t want to. I can go, if you want. I don’t want you to feel - ”

A smile ghosted across Abby’s face, and silently, she reached into the drawer for her own letter. Pressing it into his hands, she murmured, “Read this, Marcus.”

And he did. And then he lifted her into a kiss so joyous Abby felt a wave of happiness course through her entire body. “Yes,” He murmured, pressing kisses into her face and neck and hair. “Yes, yes, yes, Abby. Yes.”

And so much had passed between Marcus Kane and Abby Griffin at that point that there was only one thing either and both of them needed to know. It wasn’t any of the things Marcus had written in his vows, or Abby in her letter, not really. It was the warmth in Abby’s stomach and the joy in Marcus’ smile. It was the Old Earth word returned to their common vernacular and scratched in Marcus’ handwriting at the bottom of the yellowed page that had sat in the wooden drawer for five years. It was the feelings of safety, and comfort and  _love_ that Marcus and Abby shared, the knowledge that until death do them part, they had something to return to.

_They had a home._


End file.
